Thoughts on Social Networking Portals

How has the internet affected our social skills. Are we better at socializing now than before? Are we worse now? Does the ability to remain anonymous on the internet empower us to meet new people who we would never have met before? Does the online-electronic socializing experience hamper our one-to-one and one-to-many socializing abilities or skills? Does electronic socializing lead to one-on-one socializing? Is electronic socializing a means to and end, where the end is in-person socializing?

There are so many socializing platforms available on the internet. Starting from the most base all the way to the most professional. I have seen some platforms evolve over time. I remember there was a members site on msn at one time (it’s evolved to become spaces.live.com the old url was members.msn.com), there was the profiles side of yahoo also profiles.yahoo.com; Yahoo also developed 360.yahoo.com. These have evolved, become more powerful, and at the same time also restrictive. The power comes from allowing their members to do much more on and with these platforms, however, with power comes responsibility, the responsibility to protect the members on that platform. It may be a good thing, or a disadvantage, totally subjective to who the member is.

There are totally professional social portals also, geared and targeting the same set of people with a different product, promising that there will be only a certain type of crowd available through them. Actually, it’s the same crowd but with a different face. The site that I am really fond of in this category is www.linkedin.com.